Workers on London's underground railway threatened transport chaos by voting today to strike on New Year's Eve, when the system is always packed.
The RMT trade union said London Underground signals and line control staff voted overwhelmingly to strike on December 31st and January 4th to protest their pay, conditions and proposed job cuts on the world's oldest city network.
"The strike would affect the entire network. You can't run a network without signallers," said a spokesman for the union, adding 330 workers would walk out.
"The depth of the disruption would be determined partly by how much of a token service management were able to run by getting managers to do our members' work. I would suspect that the network would be as good as closed down."
But a spokeswoman for London Underground said talk of a shutdown was exaggerated.
"We will be able to run a service over New Year's Eve. We are planning our operations now in order to do so," she said. London Underground did not say how extensive services would be.
The union said it was meeting managers today for last-ditch talks to avert the planned strike action, the latest stage in a four-year dispute over working hours and conditions.